An increasing sensitivity to the adverse environmental impacts of technology in industrialized nations has resulted in a remediation philosophy which has evolved from pollution control by dilution (e.g. burial, incineration), to waste minimization, and now to pollution prevention and "zero emission" technologies. As a measure of the magnitude of the toxic waste problem, the U.S. environmental industry in 1990 amounted to $132 billion of which water treatment, purification, delivery and treatment comprised $15.4 billion and hazardous waste management accounted for another $15.1 billion (Environmental Business Journal, 1991). Industries are spending enormous sums of money for the disposal of toxic wastes; thus new technologies for in house remediation and recycling of chemicals are badly needed. The proposed patent invention described below is a contribution to this technological void.
Electronically conductive polymers such as polypyrrole are being considered for a variety of devices and applications including secondary rechargeable batteries, fuel cells, chemical sensing, controlled drug delivery, electrochromics, corrosion protection, antistatic formulations, and radar absorption (Kanatzidis, 1990; Studt, 1991). U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/931,212, which is incorporated herein by reference, describes polymer films with colloidal catalytic particles homogeneously dispersed therein.